With the 80-year-old Oak Ridge Outdoor Pool having structural problems and losing an estimated 110,000 gallons of water a day when the pool is in operation, city officials are looking at replacing the leaking pool shell and other changes.
Now the consultants hired by the city to come up with three options for the pool and the surrounding area have returned to Oak Ridge City Council with those options, which carry estimated price tags of $21.9 million to $28.9 million.
Landscape architect Alisha Eley and engineer Cary Dennis, both with Kimley-Horn and Associates, presented conceptual designs for the three options and information to city council on Jan. 30 at a council work sesson. All three options include keeping the pool or pools on the same site at the corner of Providence and Robertsville roads. All options offer three to four times more parking than currently at the pool – including separate parking for buses that is not available now – and other amenities such as improvements to restrooms.
“The numbers (cost estimates) really astonished me,” Mayor Pro Tem Jim Dodson said at the work session.
The type of pool or pools is where the options largely differ.
- Option 1 keeps the pool largely as it is, replacing the pool shell. It is the most costly of the options at an estimated $28.9 million, which includes a 20% contingency, according to Eley. It would hold approximately 2.2 million gallons.
- Options 2 and 3 have two pools, one mainly for competitions and lap swimming, and another more for recreation, including a lazy river and slides. Estimated cost, also with the 20% contingency, for Option 2 is $22.5 million and $21.9 million for Option 3.
In response to questions from The Oak Ridger, Seth Rodgers, Oak Ridge Recreation and Parks Department special projects coordinator, said there were two different cost estimates for Options 2 and 3 because of different sizes for the lap and diving pools and the water slides for the leisure pools. Option 2 has a lap and diving pool of 11,100 square feet that would hold approximately 625,000 gallons. The leisure pool and river on Option 2 would be 21,700 square feet and hold approximately 520,000 gallons. Option 3’s lap and diving pool would be 9,475 square feet and hold approximately 540,000 gallons, while the leisure pool and river would be 21,925 square feet and hold about 530,000 gallons.
An open house seeking people’s opinions on the pool was held last June. In addition, Kimley-Horn and city representatives sought opinions through a survey and website. A Kimley-Horn information packet and Powerpoint presentation given by Eley on Jan. 30 indicated nearly 500 responses were gathered from people in the public survey – 65% from Oak Ridge residents, 15% Anderson County residents and the remainder from the surrounding area. Of those who responded, 35% indicated they use the pool weekly when it’s open, 25% monthly.
Of the 464 comments submitted through the website, according to the presentation, 52 wanted the pool to remain the same while the others requested changes or upgrades such as as slides, a lazy river, new equipment, concessions and shade. The consultants had said they would use people’s opinions in deciding what would be included in the options and conceptual designs.
The problems
As reported earlier in The Oak Ridger, Dennis and Eley said the current 58,000-square-foot pool takes about 2.2 million gallons of water from the nearby spring to operate daily, and 110,000 gallons of that water is lost each day. Dennis said the pool has a problem with recirculation of the water, with only the water at the pool’s edges being treated with chlorine for health. That treated water does not get to the pool’s center. Jon Hetrick, city of Oak Ridge Recreation and Parks Department director, said at the June open house that the city has a waiver from the Tennessee Department of Health to allow the pool to operate in this manner. He said that waiver could be pulled at any time and likely would be taken away by the state Health Department when major work begins on the pool.
At the Jan. 30 work session, Hetrick said geotechnical work had been done and there is “significant saturation” of the ground under the current pool shell, some because it’s near the spring and some because of the leaking pool shell. He said the ground would be dried out and the shell replaced, which would address the loss of water.
The pool shell would be replaced no matter what option council chooses. The pools in Options 2 and 3 would be located roughly within the footprint of the current pool, according to Rodgers.
Bus parking would be on the Robertsville Road side of the pool. Hetrick said the pool gets buses bringing children from area camps during the summer. Parking for families and individual pool patrons would be on the Providence Road side, similar to now.
Mayor Warren Gooch said it was difficult to know what to ask at the work session, since the council had just received the information from the consultants. Hetrick said there’d be time for the council to look at the information before asking more questions and making a decision. Dodson asked the consultants to bring more detailed designs in the future.
“It’s a big project on many levels,” Hetrick said, not just financially. The city has set aside $5 million so far for the pool work, as reported after the June open house.
The Oak Ridger’s News Editor Donna Smith covers Oak Ridge area news. Email her at [email protected] and follow her on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, @ridgernewsed.
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